two sides to every issue

Submitted by yona flink (Israel), Jul 26, 2009 at 10:43

The picture you paint is very one sided. Israel needs to assume partial responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem it helped create. What was presented is only one factor in the Palestinian refugee problem. The other factor is Ben Gurion.

The other part is that Ben Gurion and the IDF did as much as possible to assist and 'insist' that Palestinians leave their homes. It was in the interest of Ben Gurion to have as few Arabs remaining in Israel. He believed that Israel would defeat the Arab armies and that the few Arabs remaining in Israel after the cease fire, the better. Ben Gurion in 1956 was quoted as saying, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country ... There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it is simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army"^[1] Nahum Goldman, president of the World Jewish Congress criticized Ben-Gurion for what Goldman viewed as his confrontational approach to the Arab world: Goldman wrote that "Ben-Gurion is the man principally responsible for the anti-Arab policy, because it was he who moulded the thinking of generations of Israelis"

Ben Gurion and the Haganah leadership expelled Arab civilians from the area between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv in March-April 1948 in an effort to remove hostile Palestinian-Arab towns and villages from Jewish controlled areas before the start of the Arab invasion which was expected when the British left in May. In an interview with Ha'aretz in 2003, Morris affirmed that Ben Gurion had probably ordered the expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda and from villages attacked during Operation Hiram. Operation Hiram, possibly also known as the Battle of Sa'sa', was a military operation conducted by the Israel Defence Force during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War It was led by General Moshe Carmel OC Northern Front, and aimed at capturing the upper Galilee region from the Arab Liberation Army forces led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji and a Syrian Ba...
in October 1948.

Israel must also take responsibility for some of the issues concerning Arab refugees.

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